Antigone’s Endless Afterlife in Latin America

 

This week I had the opportunity to attend Centroamérica, a powerful and thought-provoking performance by the Mexican company Lagartijas tiradas al sol, presented in Milan (Teatro Fontana) as part of the LIFE Festival (organized by the cultural association Zona K). Founded in 2003 in Tijuana, Lagartijas tiradas al sol is known for blurring the boundaries between documentary, fiction, and performance. The piece, performed by Luisa Pardo and Lázaro Gabino Rodríguez, with space and light design by Sergio López, is a precise and unsettling reflection on one central theme: coloniality.

It is well known that Mexico, despite its own colonial history, has come to play the role of gatekeeper for migrants from Central and South America (much like Libya and Albania do for the European Union). But what struck me most was not just this complicity with United States policies, but the deeper historical violence of the internal borders within Latin America itself. Borders drawn by Spanish, Portuguese, French, and British empires continue to fracture our continent and limit our freedom of movement. Centroamérica brings this legacy into sharp focus.

The performance unfolds in two distinct parts. The first is a meta-theatrical reflection: how does one make a performance about a region that is often silenced, ignored, or stereotyped? What narratives are possible or even ethical? The second part centers on the story of María, a Nicaraguan political exile who asks a favor of the company: to help recover the body of her brother, who died of COVID-19 and was buried in a communal grave, and transfer him to the family plot. Luisa Pardo, a middle-class Mexican artist, accepts the request and assumes María’s identity to cross the border between Costa Rica and Nicaragua, putting her own safety at risk under the repressive regime of Daniel Ortega.

The operation is ethically and aesthetically complex. Instead of adopting the often-unquestioned posture of Mexican superiority toward “smaller” Central American nations (a sense of superiority that is itself a colonial inheritance), Luisa chooses vulnerability. She lends her body and privilege to a gesture of mourning that resists state violence. In doing so, she enacts a contemporary, brown Antigone: transforming a personal request into a profound political gesture, just as feminists have always taught us.